DUMAGUETE CITY –– Doctors in Negros Oriental are appealing to local officials to immediately declare and strictly enforce the enhanced community quarantine “before it is too late.”
The plea came when a hospital here would no longer take in suspected COVID-19 cases due to dwindling personal protective equipment and other medical supplies.
The Negros Oriental Medical Society (NOMS) has asked Negros Oriental Gov. Roel Degamo and Dumaguete City Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo to immediately declare the enhanced community quarantine.
“We have very limited resources for this battle against coronavirus. Our frontliners are brave but are very afraid because so many of our fellow health care workers have already died because of COVID-19,” their statement read.
The Negros Oriental chapter of the Philippine Nurses Association, together with the deans of local Nursing schools, and the head nurses of the hospitals here, also echoed the call of the medical doctors in asking for a declaration and strict enforcement of the quarantine to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Frances Almira Cal, president of the PNA chapter, said Degamo, Remollo, and the policymakers should realize that the courage of the frontliners is not enough to fight the pandemic.
“We need your help to protect our health care workers so we can care and protect our people,” she said.
Negros Oriental has two reported COVID-19 deaths based on the March 27 report of the Department of Health in Central Visayas.
The first was the 64-year-old councilor of Tayasan town, Negros Oriental who died on March 15 and the second was a 61-year-old female who died on March 23.
Dr. Ma. Carmelita Vera Cruz, an anesthesiologist, said the medical doctors were outraged.
“We strongly believe that an enhanced community quarantine is our only chance against this coronavirus,” she said.
She said it seems that even after several meetings with the government leaders and their advisers, the significance of the need to “flatten the curve” had not been fully understood.
On Friday afternoon, Dr. Joven Occeña, an anesthesiologist, announced on his Facebook wall that the local COVID-19 Intubation Team was “temporarily disbanded.”
He gave two conditions for their return to work: a declaration of enhanced community quarantine in Negros Oriental; and a provision of complete personal protective equipment and gear.
He explained in the thread that it would be “too risky” for the team to continue intubating COVID patients without the appropriate protective gear.
The doctors also lamented the lack of clear coordination between the province and the city, as each was planning on their own.
“Many people also do not obey doctors’ advice to stay home maybe because they do not quite understand the need to stay away from people,” Dr. Vera Cruz lamented.
“We are actually very afraid of what could happen here in the province in the coming weeks, while we are so ill-equipped to deal with COVID,” she said. “Our only chance is when we could flatten the curve.”
The bell-like curve refers to the projected number of people who can be infected with COVID-19 over a certain period of time.
In the Philippines, the Department of Health and the World Health Organization have estimated that as many as 75,000 people could be infected in the next two to three months.
Dr. Vera Cruz explained that a steep curve (due to exponential growth) develops when too many people get infected with the virus in a short span of time.
“This means, more people will have to be hospitalized, and a percentage of them may need critical care and ventilator support.”
She warned that since the province lacks ventilators, those who would need intensive care would not be able to get it.
But by flattening the curve, she said the rate of infection slows down, thus, decreasing the influx of seriously ill patients who might need intensive care.
She added that this would allow hospitals with limited resources to cope with the number of patients.
In that manner, the health care system is better able to attend to each new case more completely with enough equipment even for a prolonged period of time.
Dr. Vera Cruz stressed that physical distancing is of “utmost importance in flattening the curve.”
She urged the government to implement stringent measures to ensure that “people truly keep their distance by staying off the streets and public places, out of their offices, and inside their homes.”
On Friday night, Ace Dumaguete Doctors hospital announced that they could no longer accommodate COVID-19 suspected patients due to their “dwindling personal protective equipment and other supplies.
“This war will not be fought in hospitals with our frontliners but with yourselves in your homes,” Ace Dumaguete medical director Dr. Brenda Diputado told the public, urging them to stay home.
Dr. Vera Cruz added that the constant influx of travelers from outside the province was “not helping at all as each person is a potential carrier of the virus.”
The NOMS said imposing curfews at night is “useless.”
They said that at daytime, “there are just too many people walking around in public places anyway.”